Mitchamador – the sound of summer…

Can you tell what it is yet? Image from Wikimedia Commons – click to go to the source…

In the recent heatwave in the UK the house windows have been open most of the time and we have been sitting in the garden more often. But can it be that I haven’t noticed these disconcerting noises of summer in previous years?

They began a few weeks ago when the warmer weather arrived after a miserable, cool June. I started to hear a buzzing and it became more frequent. I thought we might have a wasps’ nest under the house eaves or in the soffits. I shut the bathroom window in the middle of the night so the husband wouldn’t notice it, trying to delay the moment when he found out and we had to get someone in to solve the problem. What a hassle that was going to be…

But as we sat out in the yard more we realised what the noise was. Cockchafer beetles, also known as May bugs.

Cockchafer beetle about to take off – image from Wikipedia…

And there were a variety of other sounds from the same source among the trees. Whether one cockchafer or many, I don’t know. This is what the sounds reminded me of:

# A wasps’ nest somewhere near
# A squeaky pub sign swinging in the wind
# A creaking playground gate or ride
# A distant sawmill
# Someone trying to play a fiddle with a bow that needs more rosin
# Someone trying to play a harmonica
# Someone trying to blow a raspberry or a kazoo
# Someone trying to blow a grass-leaf harp
# A distant train whistle

Melolontha melolontha by Darkone on Wikimedia Commons…

There are two species of cockchafer we may be hearing – the common cockchafer, Melolontha melolontha, or the forest cockchafer, Melolontha hippocastani. I think we have the common sort but, as we have trees, I suppose I can’t rule out the forest form, which is slightly smaller.

Forest cockchafer, Melolontha hippocastani, by Dysmachus on Wikimedia Commons…

The word cockchafer sounds a little bit rude, but I guess it just means it is rather a bold, cheeky, strutting kind of chafer. Chafer? That comes from Old English cefer, similar to the German käfer, a word used for certain big beetles.

There are many colloquial names, particularly in East Anglia. For example chovy, billy witch, kitty witch, spang beetle, midsummer dor or my favourite, mitchamador.

I have seen a cockchafer only once in recent years – one settled on a house wall for a while and then buzzed off. They are so big and heavy-looking that it’s amazing they can fly at all.

This 1993 German postage stamp designed by Ernst Junger shows a cockchafer…

They used to be so common that there were plagues of them, both the larvae and the adult beetles destroying farm crops. They were almost wiped out by modern pesticides but have been recovering since the 1980s, when we started to control farm chemicals.

In the Middle Ages cockchafers were collected – the only form of control possible at the time – and there seems to be a rich folklore for the cockchafer in continental Europe.

In 1320 some cockchafers were tried in court in Avignon and told if they didn’t withdraw they would be killed (you can probably guess the outcome of that one). In later centuries the French had recipes for cockchafer soup or stew and the Germans have been known to eat them sugared. Mmm… crunchy!

Pranksters Maz and Moritz collect maybugs to put in their uncle’s bed in this 1865 cartoon – click on the image to see the whole story (in German)…

In most years adults appear in late April or early May (hence their May bug name – but I think they were late this year) and live for five to seven weeks. After about two weeks (and some mating), the female starts to lay eggs, deposited about 10 to 20 cm deep in the soil of farm fields. Each lays 60 to 80 eggs.

The common cockchafer lays its eggs in fields, while the forest form stays near trees. Adults love to eat oak leaves.

White grub of a cockchafer by Hedwig Storch…

The larvae, or “white grubs”, hatch in four to six weeks and feed on plant roots. They develop in the soil for three or four years, growing to four or five centimetres long before pupating in early autumn and develop into an adult cockchafer in six weeks. But still they stay in the soil, about 20 to 100cm deep, before emerging in spring.

Life cycle of the cockchafer, from Fauna Germanica, 1908…

With this long overlapping life-cycle, it is said there is a superabundance of cockchafers once every 30 years.

Adult common cockchafers are about 25–30mm long, while forest cockchafers are smaller at 20–25mm. The two species, both chestnut brown, can best be distinguished by the form of their pygidium at the back end, long and slender in the common species, shorter and knob-shaped at the end in the forest species.

Wikipedia says the male cockchafer has seven “leaves” on its antennae, while the females have six. But I think this may be different for the forest species.

Little boys apparently used to tie cotton thread to cockchafers’ legs to watch them fly in spirals and as a child Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), my favourite inventor, harnessed four cockchafers with pins through their wings to make an “engine”.

Talking of inventions, if you look at the image of a cockchafer about to take off, higher up this post, you can see where the inspiration came from for beetle-wing doors for luxury supercars.

Lamborghini Murcielago with beetle-wing doors…

Cockchafers are in the beetle family Scarabaeidae, which of course includes the wonderful scarab beetle (dung beetle) Scarabaeus sacer, beloved of the ancient Egyptians.

Sacred scarab beetles feature in the treasures of Tutankhamun – click on the picture to go to my post about the treasures…

Thanks to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons for most of the information and pictures in this post – sorry I haven’t managed to snap a May bug myself yet.

Although one of my blogger friends who has caught sight of a cockchafer is Theresa Green. See her Everyday Nature Trails post here.